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Different angle: "Worldwork" Psychodynamic Response to Terror 911
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Marc Rubinn
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Oct 05, 2001 18:02 PDT
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[NOTE: After receiving the first paragraph below, I requested further
information about what this "Worldwork" entails, after which Marc
sent the second message shown below.
I'd just like to suggest to everyone interested in this topic that
they read a book that in my view addresses the roots of the events on
September 11 in general rather than specifically (e.g.
Israel/Palestine conflict, oil interests, Taliban and the CIA
connection etc.). The book is called "Sitting in the Fire" and was
written by Arnold Mindell, the originator of an approach to world and
organizational conflict called "Worldwork". The more personal
offshoot of the ideas are contained in a methodology called
"Processwork". There is a center in Portland, Oregon that teaches
people how to become facilitators in such tension ridden contexts.
Arnold has worked to bring civilian populations together in such
areas of the world as Northern Ireland, Bosnia, post-Soviet Russian
and Oakland, California. The techniques used are socio-psychological
and go to the root causes for such events as occurred on September
11. No doubt state legal and military responses are inevitable in
the present political environment, but unless we start to take the
time to understand the dynamics behind the political issues and apply
that understanding to such conflict the world situation is likely to
deteriorate and we will feel less and less secure. More information
on Worldwork and Processwork can be obtained by visiting the web site
of the center for process work in Portland at:
http://www.processwork.org/index.htm . Arnold will be giving a 2-day
workshop on the 911 events in Seattle culminating in a community
meeting on November 9th.
Dear Steve,
I understand your feeling of vagueness around exactly what is
process work. I re-read the blurbs on the web site I mentioned and
it doesn't really give you a flavor of the experience that you are
seeking. That, however, is very difficult to relate in a short space
in words. Many people involved with political activism unfortunately
do not have much experience with such things as gestalt psychology.
The very concept of the "shadow" part of the personality as
researched by people like Jung implies that the role of the
terrorist, for instance, is to force the mainstream consciousness
into looking into a part of itself that it has been unwilling to
acknowledge and that the resolution to that "disowning" behavior is
to find a way of experiencing that behavior directly, experientially.
Arnie has found methodologies to do that in large group conflict
situations where one or the other or both sides has/have completely
disowned its/their own complicity in the creation of the conflict.
We peace activists are aware of this situation in political terms
(e.g. how the U.S. has created this situation with imperialist
behaviors) but not in the psychodynamic sense that would allow for
the immediate and relatively safe personal experience of
responsibility that arises from bedrock attitudes that are reflected
in an us vs. them mentality. The processes themselves involve
principles of gestalt psychology, body awareness, expression of the
oppressed or "ghost" spirits that infuse such group conflicts. These
principles are applied in large group gatherings and have a way of
getting below the top most layer (politico-legal) to the more basic
issues of what we all are refusing to recognize in our own selves (be
it the penchant for violence or any other negative tendency) that
becomes embodied in the "other" to serve as a reflection back to
ourselves of what we are failing to own.
There are several lengthy descriptions of the processwork at work in the situations
I mentioned (in Northern Ireland, post-Soviet Russia and Oakland)
that appear in "Sitting in the Fire". I highly urge you to read the
book to get a sense of the process at work, at least in Arnie's own
words.
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